Daycare question

Just curious. I have a FT nanny who watches them at home while I work FT (from home). But starting next week, 2 time a week (for an hour each time), I plan on taking them to the daycare at our gym. This will be their first daycare experience, and I think I'm being overly nervous about it.

Grace will still have to go to the infant room because she's not walking yet. Lily is in the toddler room because she's confidently walking. I didn't expect to have them separated, so it kind of threw me for a loop. It's their rules, I accept that. I'm just hoping that Grace has some other, active, older "infants" to interact with, since that's really why I wanted them to go so they could interact with other kids. I'm sure Lily will have a ball running around in the bigger room. It's Grace I'm stressing over a little bit.

Anyone experience this? Were your twins okay being separated like that?

 

The school that mine go to have the younger one year olds separated from the older one year olds. Same for the 2 year olds.

 

It may be a safety issue. My kids were in daycare from the time they were 5 months until 14 months. They were in the same room the entire time. However, when they were really little, 5-7 months, they were among the few really little babies there. There were several kids that were near a year old or slightly older... walking and running all over the place. I think it was hard for the teachers to keep up with such a range of needs, but because it was a super small center, they didn't have the resources to set it up any other way. It sounds like your daycare splits based on development, not on age, which is good and bad. Bad that you have to worry about the split, but good that you know that your childrens individual needs will be attended to.

 

Honestly, since it is only 2 hours a week, I wouldn't even think twice about it...

 

Our daycare technically requires toddlers to be walking. However, they mostly make the decision based on birthdate, so when my twins started in the toddler room, there were 4 (out of 9) kids who weren't walking yet.

Since this is just for a couple of hours, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

I had a seven month gap between when Bea started walking and Ainsley walking. This really isn't the same situation, but we do Gymboree. The classes run 10-16 months and 16-22 months. When we first started, they were 16 months and I explained the situation. Ainsley had just started crawling, Bea was walking very well. We ended up doing the younger class which Ainsley was fine with, but Bea became bored. As soon as Ainsley started walking, we switched to the older class. Ainsley was a little overwhelmed at first, but after she gained confidence in walking, she did fine. In a perfect world, I would have taken them each to the individual class to suit their needs, but that was not practical. Even though most of the kids in the 10-16 class were younger, Ainsley was on their level physically, whereas Bea was mowing them over and doing things inappropriate for that group (throwing, running, etc). IMO, I wouldn't worry about them being separated. It's only going to be for the time that you work out, not all day. And, it might be good for them to branch out on their own a little.

 

Mine experienced the same thing, except my boy was moved to what they call a transition room (between infant and walker) when he started crawling. He was there a little bit before Kaya moved up. When my daycare told me, I was really taken aback... but it made sense. Ethan was pushing the babies around in that room.

They're back together again, but I have to say... my girl is shy and she seemed to come out of her shell a little bit when they were separated. He also has a tendency to bully her, so I think she liked the break. We also started thinking... they are together 24/7 at daycare and at home. They must get sick of each other at some point.

Anyway, they are doing well together... but they both did really well apart. They didn't even seem to bothered by it.